Doctor Who hard reboot would be "bad idea", argues former showrunner Steven Moffat
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-hard-reboot-bad-idea-steven-moffat-newsupdate/
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-hard-reboot-bad-idea-steven-moffat-newsupdate/
27 Comments
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de · 79 pts · 17d
Why would a show with a built-in reboot mechanic even need a hard reboot?
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 34 pts · 17d
Yeah that's exactly it. Whenever it eventually comes back you can literally just cast a new Doctor, have the TARDIS appear somewhere and off you go. You genuinely wouldn't even need to necessarily explain all the loose plot ends the last season left open. The Doctor is mysterious, they can just allude to some terrible event and be vague about it. Or even just ignore it completely and let Big Finish sort it out later lol.
bless@lemmy.ml · 12 pts · 17d
"It was a gas leak. Yes, the entire universe."
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 16d
"Have you ever tried finding the shutoff valve for the whole universe? It's not where you'd think. And you can't remove all the gas either, that doesn't work. There's got to be some gas. Anyway, seems to be working again now. Mostly. Stay away from the Large Magellanic Cloud in the year 4047 though, that's still airing out."
bless@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 16d
I read that in 11th's voice, but 10 would also work for this
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 17d
So they can retell old stories and be able to shrug and say "it's completely different" I guess? Or so they can completely rewrite things without previously established history getting in the way. Continuity gets a lot harder when you have decades of lore.
Doesn't stop 40k though.
OfCourseNot@fedia.io · 26 pts · 17d
But that's the thing, there's no 'continuity' in Doctor Who. In-universe time is not linear, not even a branching multiverse or anything like that. It is, quote, 'A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff'. So, for example, you can massacre the daleks till there're only three of them and two episodes later they come back in the trillions, no biggie.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 17 pts · 17d
They've fully given up explaining how the Master comes back from being killed lol. They just show up again and everyone goes "Oh no"
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 17d
Maybe they just need better writing.
sulfidedisburseangledafternoontipper@piefed.blahaj.zone · 26 pts · 17d
Oh my god, yes. I thought that both Jodie Whitaker and Ncuti Gatwa had amazing chemistry for playing the Doctor and were just kneecapped by terrible writing. It was incredibly frustrating to the point that I had to stop watching.
Archer@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 17d
Capaldi was just handed shit script after shit script and he did what he could but you really can’t fix a shit script no matter how good an actor you are
rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 16d
Yeah, Capaldi was fantastic, but had to make do with some absolutely terrible writing. Robots of Sherwood legitimately made me mad when I saw it.
Whitaker got the same treatment, but somehow even worse. She couldn't even settle for playing an interesting Doctor in bad story lines. Instead they made her an unironic PTA middle-aged mom trying to be hip, when she could have been so much more.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 16d
I stopped during the Whitaker season. I loved her doctor. The episodes were just so... absolutely boring. I didn't even actively decide to not watch it. I just forgot to watch it, because I wasn't really excited for a new episode
TVA@thebrainbin.org · 3 pts · 17d
100%. I absolutely loved both of their takes on the character, but, calling the writing hit or miss is giving it a lot of credit.
thenextguy@sh.itjust.works · 23 pts · 17d
throwsguyoutthewindow.jpg
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 17d
And a consistent production schedule. Parts of Moffat's run (especially around the 50th anniversary) were pretty chaotic because of BBC fuckery (he had to write multiple versions of the 50th IIRC including one with different Doctors and one with no Doctors at all) and although nobody's really talked about it yet, it's a pretty open secret that the RTD2 era was absolute madness behind the scenes, with the BBC and Disney both fucking it about at the same time.
Not that I'm saying there wasn't bad writing as well (Space Babies, you will go down in infamy) but I think having a consistent production (even to the point of knowing if the actor who's playing the Doctor will still be there for the next thing you produce, which has not always been the case) would certainly make it easier to plan things out properly.
wjrii@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 17d
Completely fair for Doctor Who specifically, and as others have pointed out, utterly trivial to handwave things into however much of a reboot the new writers decide they want to do. Audiences of legacy SF properties will roll with whatever nonsense they need to if the resulting stories are compelling.
Rhaedas@fedia.io · 13 pts · 17d
One thing that I appreciated about Doctor Who over the decades and also is why I'm not a big fan is how loose it is with lore and previous episodes. There's some continuity, but there's also a built in acceptance that things might change because of "reasons". Try that with Trek or Star Wars or lord help you Tolkien and the fans will kill you, but for Who fans they're always waving their hands around. It's about the atmosphere and campiness, not hard facts that would deter a story. I've always seen Doctor Who as like a collection of scifi short stories all sort of tied together but not needing to be.
Granted, I again am not a big fan, mostly watching the older stuff, so maybe that's not an accurate assessment now, but that was the "feel" I always got from it whenever I would catch an episode here and there. If Doctor Who had lyrics to the theme, it ought to be something similar to MST3K's "it's just a show".
socsa@piefed.social · 14 pts · 17d
That's part of the fun though. It lets them do massive epic story arcs without needing to constantly be writing around those consequences later on. Especially with stories that are so nonlinear and time travel oriented, every tedious plot would basically hamstring every future plot, unless you are willing to play fast and loose with the lore. Then you can really get creative, while sticking to a handful of "fixed points" in the lore, which themselves can also be changed if the plot is sufficiently dramatic.
Archer@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 17d
If it’s a big enough problem, it gets eaten by the time pterodactyls. Easy peasy
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 16d
Or the time knife
Wait, wrong show
MimicJar@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 17d
It wouldn't even make sense. You have all of time and space to explore and can just say "Timey-Wimey" to explain things if you step on anything established.
njm1314@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 16d
The last time they did a hard reboot it ushered in the greatest era of the show. Don't know why its unthinkable.
Take a break for a while and get some fresh thinking in there. Also allow fan interst to rekindle.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 16d
Doctor Who has never had a hard reboot.
kandoh@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 16d
And that's exactly the way they should handle it in 2036
reddig33@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
Strong disagree. Let it rest for five to seven years. Then start afresh with only slight callbacks to modern Who.
If it was me, I’d cast David Morrissey as the doc.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 16d
Thats a soft reboot